


A Brief Essay on Cybertronian Time-keeping and Conversions.

by Akzeal



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Orn, Other, Vorn, joor, time-keeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 02:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akzeal/pseuds/Akzeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is basically just what it says, my attempt to work the primary units of time in Transformers into a cohesive whole. This is what I use in all my fics, and I thought others might find it interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief Essay on Cybertronian Time-keeping and Conversions.

It's probably not obvious in my fics, but I do not use the official Earth-to-Cybertronian time conversions. It's not obvious because the changes are very minor, and this is my attempt to explain _why_ I don't use the official conversions.

Before I get started, I need to explain that, in my headcanon, Transformers use base 16 to count instead of our base 10. Base 16, also called hexidecimal or 'hex', is primarily used as a human-friendly representation of binary code. Transformers are computers, in a manner of speaking, and so they might well run off binary, but that gets very difficult for counting. I chose hex because it's simpler. Now, as for what 'base 16' _means_ , I'll explain it this way. In English, we count 'zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,' and then ten is a new column. That's 'base 10', because there's ten single digit numbers. Each step after that is, again, ten numbers. 10-19, 20-29, ect. In base 16, there are sixteen single digit numbers. In English, we show this by going '...seven, eight, nine, a, b, c, d, e, f' and then they go to ten as well. So, if you've ever seen the 'hex triplet' for a color, it will show as something like 'C0C0C0'. This is _exactly the same_ as the RGB value 192, 192, 192.

Okay, the reason I went into all of that is just this. Years ago, I went to make a time-line for an RP-based AU'verse. At that time, I found that orns were defined as 13 days, and joors were defined as 6.5 hours. That's 48 joors to the orn, defining 24 hours in 13 days divided by 6 hours in a joor. Breem was 8 minutes, more or less, and that made 45 breems to the joor. By changing the length of a breem slightly, from 8 minutes to 8.12 minutes, I had 48 breems to the joor and 48 joors to the orn. It was recognizing that number which actually caused my 'Base 16 Headcanon' to form, because, in base 16, what _we_ call 48 _they_ call 30. It's the exact same amount of stuff, just a different name, and I adored the concept of a (semi-)round number at the base of their time-keeping.

With this basis, I went on to groon, by multiplying 13 days by 48. I got a number that was more than a years worth of days, so I divided by 365 to get 1.71 years to the groon. By multiplying that, again by 48, and then dividing by 365, I got 82.06 years to a vorn. This is the biggest difference in my time equivalents and the official one- my vorn is nearly a full year shorter than the cannon vorn.

The next biggest difference is the length of the astrosecond. This one was found by multiplying 8.12 minutes by 60, to find out how many seconds were in a breem, and then by dividing by, you guessed it, 48. This gives me 10.15 earth seconds to the astrosecond, as opposed to .498 seconds to one astrosecond. The closest measurement to that is my klick, which is .2114583 seconds long, which I usually round to .21 seconds.

Now, with all that said, my final conversion chart reads like this;

Klick – 0.21 earth seconds  
Astrosecond – 10.15 earth seconds  
Breem – 8.12 minutes  
Joor – 6.5 hours  
Orn – 13 days  
Groon – 1.71 years  
Vorn – 82.06 years

48 of each to the next longest

On the canon chart, astrosecond is .498 seconds, breem is 8.3 minutes, a groon is about an hour, a joor is 6 hours, an orn is now undefined, and a vorn is 83 years. That's 100 astroseconds to the breem, about seven breems to the groon, 43.3 breems to the joor, and... a _lot_ of joors to the vorn. This is just a mess, and adding the other time phases which are defined do nothing to clarify this confusion. I cannot imagine a civilization, with a sun or stars (which Cybertron had at one point), basing their time off the sun or stars, and coming up with such a mess. Even if you told me they were using the Quintession time, well... then the system ought to be in base five, or maybe our base ten. Currently it's... just a mess.

I view the minor changes of .12 minutes added to a breem, and half an hour added to the joor, and even a year subtracted from the vorn, to be acceptable in the pursuit of creating a logical, tidy time-keeping system. Of course, not everyone will agree, but this is fandom! That's why we have head-canons!


End file.
